Jeff Jarvis, The Advertiser's Friend

Over at BuzzMachine, Jeff Jarvis writes about an AdAge article that argues that blogs, podcasts and RSS still have a long way to go before obtaining the reach of traditional media. They trot out a bevy of statistics to prove a point that's not altogether surprising, given the fact that much of this new media has only been in the mainstream public consciousness for a couple of years. In his one short paragraph, Jarvis works himself up into something of a tizzy, which seems more self-defensive than logical. He writes: "Advertising Age has an amazingly story — amazingly bad — trying to assure advertisers that they don’t need to worry their not-so-little heads about all this digital stuff they hear." He goes onto warn advertisers to ignore new media at their own peril. Personally, I don't think that AdAge is saying that advertisers should ignore this new media, it's just saying not to buy into the hype. (In full disclosure, I work for AdAge's sister publication BtoB Magazine, though I am not a writer there.)